A Song In Seven Tongues
by Rashaka
Summary: "You wanted someone to be the conscience you'd set aside."... ...wherein Elena takes a level in bad ass, and Elijah's just boss at ruling the world.
1. Mystic Falls, Virginia

Elena/Elijah, somewhere after 4x18

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**A Song In Seven Tongues**

_Mystic Falls, Virginia_

When the end comes for Rebekah, it's a just a little death. The vial of blood falls from her fingers, and she smiles at her siblings. Klaus pulls against Elijah's grasp, furious and bitter, caught in a hold he could have broken, should have broken.

"That was for _Elena_," he snarls. "How dare you deny me, traitor!"

The accusations fall on a silent room as Rebekah stumbles, clutches her breast, and falls. She never hits the ground.

"No!" the last sons of Ester roar, united at last in their pain. Across the room, the Salvatores glimpse a future they almost bought.

"She's dust," whispers Stefan, "My god, Damon, we would have turned Elena to _dust_." Turning to the vampire at his side, he blinks when the face of his brother fades to a stranger.

"Full disclosure: I'm not Damon," says Silas, and calmly breaks Stefan's neck.

From a distance, Elena watches the pieces fall like the living version of a chess master's endgame. Down they go: generous Elijah and invincible Klaus, then beautiful Caroline and lonely Katherine. At last there remains only Bonnie Bennett, standing over the bodies with souls in her fingertips and spells on her eyelids.

The strongest, and the weakest, of Elena Gilbert's beloved has come to save the world. Bonnie, daughter of witches, screams until the Earth itself joins her aria. When Silas burns, Elena doesn't even stay to watch his ashes crumble. The vampire that had once been a girl picks a spot outside in the shadows and sits, listening to terror echo within.

A shell, Elena waits. In the place where grief and love should meet, she finds only hunger. It's a dull throbbing taste that never leaves her the roof of her mouth, and it hurts more than any ambition, any passion, any loss. When she thinks about the men who loved her, Elena feels hollow. When she thinks about the friends who believed in her, she wonders if they're dead yet. She's still waiting, still patient, when Elijah's feet come to a halt before her vision.

"You're alive," notes Elena, glancing up at the thousand-year-old monster. "How nice for you."

Ashes streak his face and blood cakes his neck. With every minute more noises pour from the place of power: recriminations, blame, whispers of agony. Always behind the words lurks the echo of magic as wounds regrow to soft flesh. Someone, maybe Caroline, is crying. It's almost morning as Elijah looks down at the vampire wearing a face he loved so very long ago.

"I'm leaving Mystic Falls," he tells her. "My sister is dead, and my parents. Finn and Kol are dead. There's nothing but death in this town."

When he holds his hand out to Elena, she takes it.


	2. Edinburgh, United Kingdom

The final line in this chapter is a quote from Peter S. Beagle, one of my favorite writers.

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**2**

_Edinburgh, United Kingdom_

Their first day in Scotland culminates in Elena standing over an old woman's body while Elijah sighs and cleans grit from under his fingernails.

"Oh no," says Elena with exaggerated remorse. "The fearsome _Elijah Mikaelson_ is judging me. Odd, given that since we met, you've ripped out more beating hearts than get donated to my biology class in a year."

"I'm not criticizing your bloodlust, Elena, merely this affectation of stupidity you've chosen to adopt." He idly nudges the corpse with his shoe, checking for any last signs of fight in her, and puts his hands in the pockets of his blazer. "A person who's spent two years with vampires should be more discreet with her meals."

Elena steps over the body, into the Original's personal space, and blandly tells him, "Take your sanctimonious shit...and eat it."

Raising one eyebrow, Elijah tilts his lip into a half-smile. They're near enough for him to smell Scottish woman's blood on Elena's breath. "So mulish," he says. He lifts his hand to twirl the bright lock of red in her hair. "So intent on being something other than a Gilbert or a Petrova."

He flicks the bit of hair from his fingers disdainfully, and Elena thinks the lecture's over. She steps backward, then gasps to find herself held against the cement wall of the airport's underground garage, Elijah's fingers around her neck.

"Wait," she burbles, blood and saliva welling in her throat.

He tsk-tsks her, holding the younger vampire casually with one hand while he digs for his cellphone with the other. "Elena, calm down. I'm not going to kill you for following your nature, but if you'd like to remain as my companion, then clearly we must have rules."

Turning on his cell phone and scrolling idly through a program, he keeps Elena restrained while he dictates. "To start off, no more playing with your food. Leaving bodies to rot behind us is unacceptable behavior in an adult, much less a vampire. You may feed where you like but you do not kill without my permission. Not humans, not vampires, not werewolves. If you take a life, I will know about it, and you won't find me as benevolent and understanding as your little boy-toys."

He releases her, and Elena chokes back tears as she puts her hands on her knees. She never stops coughing long enough to realize that she's dead already, and a walking corpse can't be injured by a crushed windpipe. "How do you expect to enforce that?" she bites out, gasping. "Gonna compel me to be a good little girl like Stefan wants?"

He chuckles, taps something on his display screen, then puts the phone away in the same pocket. Approaching Elena again, he says coolly, "I wouldn't do you the disservice of such treatment. This alliance will be your choice. You will come with me and you will follow my rules. I won't force you to engage your emotions until you're ready, and I won't threaten your life."

"What do you call this?" She points to the ring of bruises on her neck.

"A slap on the wrist, at best."

Flinging her hair back, Elena calms herself with effort. "I'm just supposed to be your minion then. A mini Katherine you can show off to your friends. Yes, this is _exactly _why I left Mystic Falls."

Smirking at her sarcasm, he appraises her. "Doppelgangers aren't meant to be lackeys; that was my brother's mistake. I've got something else in mind, at least until you decide whether or not you want to embrace your humanity again. It's a bit old-fashioned, but I think we're better off going for an official title. You can be my...apprentice."

Elena's laughter floats across the parking garage, and she sounds more like Damon with every echo. "I can learn to drink gin in European airports and clean up after Klaus! How thrilling. I'll wear only the most fashionable tops while I listen to your brother's plans for ruining more families."

"Firstly," Elijah lifts one finger. "No young woman who streaks her hair in such a _fetching_ shade of neon would turn down a free world tour, vampire or not. So don't pretend the idea traveling with a wealthy older man holds no appeal for you, Elena. Secondly, I don't drink gin and after what happened in Mystic Falls, I don't care what Niklaus does with himself."

Sliding up to her, close enough to kiss, Elijah whispers a truth she isn't ready to hear. His words cut through the call of blood still singing under her skin, forcing her to remember the people she left behind.

"The Salvatores are orphans, Katerina abandoned them the night they were reborn. See what's become of their choices? Stefan treats his gift like an addiction, and Damon has the impulse control of a broken child. No sooner are you turned than they try to make you a victim of your own shadow. That's not what you deserve, Elena. Come with me, learn from me, and see what it is to be a vampire. Learn to wield power against your enemies, and learn to release that power when it no longer serves you. Kill for me, be merciful for me, and find out how the world really operates. No tricks, no traps."

He murmurs in her ear, soft and intimate. "I offer you respite, Elena Gilbert. Freedom from duty or obligation to your old life, and the safety to discover your potential."

She closes her eyes, breathes in the scent of his tailored wool suit over the grease and bile of the body in the garage. "For how long?"

"As long as you'd like," promises Elijah. "When you're immortal, there are no happy endings—because nothing ends."


	3. Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire

Elena/Elijah was always a background pairing for me, but this week it's taken over my fandom brain. So delighted to find I'm not alone! Reviews are welcome, always.

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**3**

_Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire_

Sun washes over the palm trees, and falls on two people beside an empty hotel pool. A man sits at an umbrella table, fiddling with technology and ensconced in his work. He neither sweats nor breathes, and his only concession to the heat is to peel off his suit jacket and roll up his sleeves. Nearby, a woman stretches out on a lounge chair, almost nude in a turquoise bikini. Her dark hair fans behind her head, and as she relaxes, she considers which of the servers she'd like to eat tonight.

Not so long ago, at the human age of eighteen, Elena had believed that rejecting her emotions would be a reprieve from guilt. It promised the chance to dance through a hedonistic life without the burdens of personal bonds. That he had done so was one of Damon Salvatore's many lies, a fact she can only understand now that she's begun the dance herself. He bullied his way into Stefan's life out of devotion to a woman he hadn't seen in a century, and he stayed for love of a woman that was just as much out of reach. Jealousy, passion, and anger motivated Damon, yet the small-town American girl who became a vampire feels none of these things.

As she passes the time waiting for Elijah to Skype with his banker, all Elena Gilbert feels is thirst.

That's the trick Stefan never told her, the catch in the story that Damon kept to himself. What happens when you cleave off the edges of your humanity? A vacuum must be filled, and for vampires, it fills with hunger. All other desired are buried, tossed aside, given no purchase on one's superego. As a living creature, she can still taste lust, irritation...even curiosity. But the pique is gone, overlain with a patina of red.

Turning her gaze, Elena watches Elijah work. He doesn't look her way, but their connection is potent after a year in each other's company, and he senses her attention. Vampires can develop an affinity, like the way Stefan will never lose his big brother in a room, and how Caroline always knows when Tyler is thinking about sex. It might be magic or it might simply be the cocktail of senses their kind is privy to, but it serves as a splendid survival tool. There's always that push and pull, first attraction and then repulsion. Other vampires are rivals, but they are also kin. They can hunt with you, they can fight against you, and often they can have fantastic, inhuman sex with you.

As she sits up with her eyes on Elijah's back, she wonders for the hundredth, even the thousandth time what sex with an Original would be like. How much stronger is he? How much passion does he repress behind every tight, restrained gesture? In the year since Elena became his protégé, the master vampire has rejected her at every turn. It's a puzzling reaction that Elena fails to understand, since he betrays his desire almost constantly around her.

When she's not looking, and sometimes when she is, the older vampire's gaze will crawl across her skin, memorizing corners and curves. There are moments when his face gets very still, and he steps so close that Elena's sure it will happen. Yet an invisible curtain falls at the last breath, dividing them. Kisses do not move him and the one time she snuck into his bed after a rejection, he bit her so viciously that her throat took a day to heal. That cooled her attraction for a while, as Elijah never uses force unless she genuinely and magnificently pisses him off.

Yet her curiosity cycles back (always back) to him. Sex is fun, it takes the edge off hunger and it kills the ennui. Elena is willing to bet that sex with Elijah will be considerably more fun than the human she bedded two nights ago, or the newbie vampire she tumbled the previous week in Cairo.

She rises, wraps her towel around her hips, and stalks toward the table. Leaning over his shoulder so that her hair falls across his vision, she inhales the scent of his neck. When this elicits no reaction, Elena lets her fingers trail along his arm, up and down in little touches until he catches her in a grip harder than steel.

His tone is flat when he says, "That's enough, Elena, you've made your point."

She whines, "I'm _bored_. We can entertain each other."

Elijah meets her eyes over his shoulder. "Do you want this hand back, or is it mine now? It's quite lovely. The next time it wanders, I might rip it off and put it on a shelf to admire."

When she pouts and tugs gently against his superior strength, he releases her wrist with a flicking motion. "This," he gestures at her sensuous pose, "is not why you're here. I don't want a lover, Elena."

Crossing her arms, the younger vampire meets his challenge boldly. "We both know _that's_ not true."

Elijah's returning stare is unblinking, and after a few seconds under his scrutiny she folds as she always does. Having failed at her seduction, Elena drops into the white plastic chair beside him and crosses her legs, leaning back to gaze at nothing. It's one of the differences between her predecessor and herself: Elena is bullish where Katerina is precise. The doppelganger can mimic 'Katherine' well enough, and there are times when the talent for personal insight they both utilize in such abundance makes them nigh indistinguishable, but the Gilbert girl has none of Petrova's patience.

Once the manipulative persona has failed to achieve what she wants, Elena's natural demeanor emerges. She is efficient, detached, and forthright. Like the human she pretends so fiercely doesn't exist within her, Elena is ever unyielding and brave in the pursuit of her goals. Elijah is aware, of course, that he is one of her goals. This doesn't bother him, because it keeps her nearby, a place he prefers her to be. Better that she chase him with these girlish attempts at his libido than she disappear while her humanity remains in question.

In the opposite chair, Elena twirls her hair around her finger. She says, "If you insist on being miserable, fine. What _do_ you want?"

His answer never changes: "Loyalty."

"I let you drag me to the boring part of West Africa. If this isn't loyalty, you need new friends."

Allowing a slight smile, Elijah spins his tablet and slides it across the glass surface to her. "Speaking of friends, this is the vampire I came to Côte d'Ivoire to see. One of mine, I regret to admit. I turned him in Egypt during the Bonaparte invasion of 1798."

She makes a show of memorizing the digital picture. "What's he doing in Abidjan?"

"Selling cigarettes on the black market to French and Turkish businessmen."

Already disenchanted, Elena pushes the tablet back to him. "You don't smoke, what do you care if he drives up the market price?"

"I care," he explains, "because that money is going to fund his little international conflict. A conflict which happens to place one of my other interests at risk. Such was enough to earn my attention two years ago, but before I had the chance to address it, I dropped by Mystic Falls to take care of a little problem for Niklaus." Leaning sideways in his chair, Elijah smirks. Conservative, but amused. "As you may recall, I ended up daggered twice thanks to you."

Lounging in the pool chair, half-naked, Elena shrugs. "We're here now."

"We are," he agrees. He opens another PDF to show her a list of personal accounts and detailed financial transactions. "And while I've been busy ever since, Mansa took it upon himself to bite the son of warlord in Mali. He then sent the boy back to his father to use as a weapon. I knew he was pushing too far into the local politics, but I'd hoped my first warning would stay him. Mansa chose otherwise, so he dies."

"You made this Mansa, sire-bonded and all. Having both of us go is a waste of time."

"A fair point, the task _is _best suited to one." Elijah clucks his tongue against his teeth and looks at his apprentice again. "You're overdue for a test of your progress, so why don't you execute him? Make a challenge of it and see if you can compel him first."

Her initial, rebellious instinct is to balk, something he still hasn't broken her of yet. She leans forward and protests, "It's one thing if you do it, but he's two hundred years old, Elijah. I'm _nineteen_."

"Well, if you die, then we'll know you weren't—what's the gamer phrase?—hardcore."

"Fine," snaps Elena, effectively challenged. "But if I can compel him to send you a text message before he kicks, you owe me a present."

"Oh?" His eyebrows climb up his forehead at the demand. "What would you like, diamonds? New wheels?"

"A secret." Scooting forward on her chair, she uses her large, brown eyes to her advantage as she purrs, "Something you've never told anyone but your family."

"Expensive," he sighs. "You grow more like Katerina every day."

This kills her playful mood, and Elena folds back into her chair, expression deadened. "Katherine doesn't ask for secrets, she _steals _them. Don't compare us."


	4. Denver, Colorado I

Changes they are a'coming!

Reviews are little presents that light up my afternoon, whether you talk about the fic or just want to babble about Elena/Elijah, it works for me. =)

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**4**

_Denver, Colorado_

Elena spends seven years with a stone where her heart should beat.

She has no concept, when she leaves her home of blood and pine, for how vast the spinning globe called Earth can be. This universe outside of Mystic Falls is filled with predators and prey, all bowing to the grace of the Original family. It would have dizzied Elena, had she been capable of wonder, to think that her tiny clan was responsible for the deaths of two of their number in a year's time, and witness to a third.

In all the lands and in all the languages, Klaus is the king of the immortals. He may not have a throne, he may not have a court, but his name means death and his promise is power. Elena walks in that shadow now, if only by reputation. To be the chosen of Elijah, one of the two paragons left standing, is to be seen walking with death.

Yet he doesn't kill as often as she expected, and it's not until their third year together that she understands why. "I don't have to," he explains, "Because I've already killed too many to count. With every year I live, I must do less to prove myself. Men like Mansa are housekeeping, nothing more. This is what is to be the first family, Elena. Petty squabbles over territory are meaningless. Save my brother, I _have _no rivals."

The plan for her is greater than a life of indolence and easy feeding, and this suits Elena. Young vampires bore as easily as young women, so her lessons are spread from language to math. Human money is of endless fascination to Elijah, and he hounds her until she grasps economics as thoroughly as a doctoral candidate. He teaches her to fight with hands and teeth, then with weapons, then with guile. Compulsion may not be his fondest tool, but if it crossed his mind he could make a seven-hundred-year-old teenager dance with a knife in her belly, and never drop the blade. This is the wealthiest gift he gives to Elena: mental stamina beyond her age. She is schooled in forbearance, penetration, barricades, and illusion until there are few dreamwalkers alive as talented as _le Chevalier des Premiers_.

Elena likes that name, because she earned it stopping a witch's poison meant for her mentor. "You don't fuck with a knight," she informs him over sushi. "Or you get disemboweled. Ever disembowel anyone? I did it yesterday." Elijah's mouth twists whenever he hears it, because the grammar is all wrong for a woman, but he rewards her loyalty with another secret.

After seven winters and seven summers, Elena carries more pieces of Elijah Mikaelson than any creature but Klaus. She never stops to think why, because questions are for people who care, and they say _le Chevalier_ has a stone for a heart.

Yet, given time and pressure, even the earth will crack.

The doppelganger's self-imposed servitude to the prince of vampires ends when she sees a body lying face-up in the snow, and stone shatters under the weight that follows.

She kneels beside the young man, watching tiny icicles form over two red holes in his chest. Pink frost below gives a story of his ending, and the narrative is a violent one. Some gangbanger, with sloppy brown hair that reeks of marijuana and a face gone cold and white in the darkness. Elena touches his forehead, then his blue lips, and when she closes his eyes with her fingertips, a tear drops from her cheek to his. Startled, she brushes moisture away from her eyes, but the another takes its place. They flow from the broken damn within Elena, one spilling into another as they wash away the red filter that obscured her vision for seven long, empty years.

Time starts again, tick-tock, tick-tock, and under the spell of awakening she screams a harpy's shriek, then punches the brick of the alley. It cracks, little more than an eggshell to her wrath.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, the world is alive and Elena Gilbert is alive and Jeremy, Jeremy, _Jeremy is **dead**_.

She scrabbles at her cheeks with her fingers, scratching the skin under her eyes as she tries dig the saltwater out of her essence before it can do more damage. But Elena's body can't—won't—stop crying. Tears leech her inhuman strength until she's curled up in a knot beside a teenage gunshot victim, weeping into her coat sleeves.

"My brother's never coming back," she whimpers to the dead boy. He doesn't answer, but a pair of arms encircle Elena, lifting her up, up, up, until she's safe again.

"I called you," sobs Elena. "I called you, and called you, and called you."

"I heard you," whispers Elijah, burying his face in the crook of her neck. "And I'm here. I've always been here."


	5. Denver, Colorado II

Bit of a delay with this one, thanks for waiting! I am changing the story's rating for this chapter, so head's up.

Theme song of this chapter is "When You're Ready" by Kate Earl, and "Eyes On Fire" by Blue Foundation

Thanks for reviewing!

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**5**

_Denver, Colorado II_

He takes her back to the hotel, a blur of darkness past prying eyes.

For a long time she cries into Elijah's shoulder, shivering and quiet. Here, she is safe from ghosts, safe from Klaus, safe from the life she let slip by the wayside. Nothing can hurt her with Elijah's lips breathing soft promises in her hair, so she lets the past wash over her at last.

Her brother hits first: gorgeous and living and heartbroken at their parents' grave. He pulls out his Playstation and hides in the car, unable to stand the sight of dirt clumps falling on oak.

After Jeremy come the faces of her victims, patterned before her eyes in a slow dance of recrimination. A cheerleader with a blue ribbon, then a waitress serving coffee to vampires. Outside Belarus she killed man who sold pastries because she wanted to test her curfew, and in a hundred cities she fed on the living to keep herself strong.

Pushing away their fear, Elena tries to picture the place where she was born. When she leaves the safety of Elijah's arms for the bathroom, the sight of Uncle John's casket swims in her vision. As she steps into the shower, shivering and exhausted, each drop of water burrows an old memory into her skin. She feels them all: Matt's hair like golden straw under her fingers the first time they kiss in the eighth grade, Bonnie's warm cheek pressed against hers while they cried. She remembers Stefan's mouth sliding over her thigh, and Damon's hands fighting so hard not touch what he can't seem to keep.

Pain is not the right word for what Elena feels, because this sensation is enveloping, not invading. Like a blanket wrapped around her thoughts, it's comforting and familiar. A friend returned from a long absence. Elena pleats her wet hair into a pony tail, and she thinks of Caroline making games for their sleepover parties. She puts on her jeans and heeled boots—a black leather pair she bought from a shopgirl in New York with Jenna's bright hair. When she steps out, all the hurt is buried under a red velvet top, a sweater, a coat, and even a scarf. Layers might be unnecessary to her kind, but tonight Elena craves any ritual that will offset thinking.

From the door outside her hotel room, Elijah is a black hole of sound and scent. His eyes track her as she walks into the hall, but she catches his gaze and shakes her head, once.

He lets her go, though his hands fist at his side and his expression cuts her into tiny pieces with its concern. The older vampire hasn't looked at Elena that way since Mystic Falls, the night he held out his hand and spirited her away from their two broken families.

_Liar liar_, whispers the heart in her chest where the stone should be. Elijah has given her a thousand expressions. Every frown, every smirk, and every smile is a promise she never bothered to return. Yet they're all still here, tucked beneath the thing that beats and the blood that flows, if she only cares to see.

"Stay," commands Elena, because some things are too bright to look at.

He stays, she goes, and snow crunches beneath her feet as she runs.

When she reaches the highest building in the city, Elena compels the night guard to let her in. She rides the elevator to the top and sits out of the farthest ledge, where the great confessions happen in the movies she grew up watching with Jeremy. The romance is disappointing in its absence: no more brothers, no more friends, no lovers to chase her honor up the balcony. It's cold, ten below at street level, and the wind up here gathers her hair into a tangling mess.

Taking the most precarious ledge, she lets her feet swing over the city and contemplates what a massive mistake it is to let her emotions erupt again. Hasn't it been easier, this life? No one dies for the innocent little doppelganger anymore, and because she has no friends there's no one to exploit for favors or protection. Elijah gives her things to do, and aside from his errands she eats when she's hungry, screws when she's horny, and doesn't spend a single minute of the day thinking about her past.

Breathing deeply, as a human would, she leans out further to watch the glowing vehicles meander through traffic. They move like yellow Christmas lights on string, and prompt something at the edge of Elena's mind.

"Oh shit," she says to the cars, spine tensing straight up while her entire body seizes with memory. "Oh _god_, I burned all my mother's ornaments."

Elena steps back from the ledge, distracted by a new and overwhelming fear: there may be literally _nothing_ left of the Gilbert legacy thanks to her stupid tantrum seven years ago. Were her grandfather's journals at the house, or in the cabin? Who owned the cabin now? The deed was at the bank but banks required identification, and her birth certificate was at the house, tucked under her jewelry box with—

With a letter. Her eyes snap shut and even though her hands are near frozen to blue, she can feel the texture of soft paper smoothing between her fingertips.

"Carry it with you," she whispers. The wind howls across the roof, stealing his words . Her whole body starts to shake, and Elena turns to the rooftop entrance. As she descends, she begins to jog. One minute passes, two, three, and the jog becomes a flat sprint. Her pounding feet eat up floors and then whole streets as she runs back to the man standing sentinel at her door.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, says the vampire heart inside Elena Gilbert.

Two hours gone and he's still waiting when she slides to a stop in the carpeted hallway. Elijah looks up from where his fingers skim the surface of his phone, and this time his expression fills her until every broken piece has found a place.

"Elena," he says. He steps from the wall he's been leaning against, all the coiled power of a tiger made casual for human pretense. Wide and soft brown, his eyes take in her frazzled appearance. "How do you feel?"

"Big," replies Elena, mouth dry as she stares at the person who's been carrying her soul in his pocket for years, ready to dig it out, brush it off, and offer it back to her unconditionally.

_Always, and forever._

_I'm leaving Mystic Falls._

_There are no happy endings, because nothing ends._

She can see him at sunset beside the pool in Abidjan, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and blood smeared in the corner of his mouth. She blinks, and the clock moves. He's beneath a street lamp in Mexico City, bent over laughing about some stupid video on the internet she didn't bother to watch.

Elena takes a step toward him, and says, "So much bigger than yesterday."

One step follows the next. Elijah breathes her name like a talisman—

"_Elena_."

—and the tiger pounces.

Her back smashes into the door of the hotel room, pushing it in as Elijah's hands cup her waist and ass so possessively it wipes her thoughts away. Elena takes his face in her grasp, her mouth fighting for space in their kiss.

The lights of the room are still off, and he has her against a wall. Elena's legs pincer his rib-cage while she curls her fingers into his hair, as long as it was the day they met. There's nothing new about his scent, because she's smelled his power and his blood for seven years, but she's never tried to crawl inside his skin before. In the exploding sensory experience of having her heart back, every touch is new and every spike of arousal is exhilarating.

This is hers, all of it. She wants every limb, every inch of flesh. Something to match the secrets she's already coaxed out of his heart. Elena wants him, has lived in want of him, and with the curtain lifted Elijah Mikaelson is hers for the taking.

She digs between the buttons of his shirt, catching and ripping them. Untroubled, Elijah is busy taking apart her layers while his lips slide a hot, wet trail over her neck. Everything feels too slow, then too fast, and when she crashes into the bed Elena gasps because his fingers follow her down. She arches, his digits circling the nub of her sex.

"What do you want, Elena?" he asks, slipping another finger inside her to counter the stimulation of her clit. "Name it, and I'll give it to you."

She gasps, eyes tight shut. "I don't know."

"You do, ask." Every word is punctured with a swipe of his thumb or a thrust of his knuckles in the wet between her legs, and his lips move across her cheek to the place beside her ear.

He murmurs, "There's nothing I wouldn't give you," and it sounds like a promise.

"I want—I want your mouth," she moans, and Elijah replies with a hard kiss that presses her into the mattress. When she whimpers, he rears back, gathers her legs on either side, and runs his hands over her calves as he slides her up the bed.

"A fine beginning," he agrees, and Elena stops thinking at all.


	6. Denver, Colorado III

Only two reviews for a smut chapter? Harsh crowd, haha. Anyway, sorry that this one took a bit longer than the rest. We're in the home stretch now! I've been blitzing on the E/E pairing for the last two weeks, so my profile has some great fanfics favved if you want something to read next. Comments are always welcome, held close to my heart!

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**PUBLIC NOTICE: Please do not repost the full content of this fanfic ANYWHERE without my permission.** I'd prefer that if someone reads this story, that they read it in the format it was originally intended to be presented. Thank you.

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Theme songs of this chapter are "Skinny Love" by Birdy, "Between the Bars" by Elliot Smith, and "I Know, I Know, I Know" by Tegan & Sara.

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**6**

_Denver, Colorado III_

Sleep comes, sleep goes, and in the lulls between passion they talk with a frankness that hasn't existed between them in years.

"I feel like I've been let out of jail," confesses Elena. Her breath sighs into the planes of his stomach as she mumbles, "My own head was the prison, and you were my warden."

He trails fingers through her hair, a river of darkness winding over the bed and across his chest. This touch is Elijah's supplication, a devotion he's long waited to lay at her shrine. He contemplates the best response, because there's no explanation he can offer Elena that she doesn't already grasp.

After all, her ailment is no loss of memory, no unwilling compulsion. The Gilbert doppelganger made her own prison years ago, when Damon Salvatore gave her a way out of her responsibilities. Her sire opened the door—she was the one who passed through it.

"It's why you chose me," he says at last. Elijah twists a chocolate strand around one finger, then watches it unspool. "You wanted someone to be the conscience you'd set aside."

Elena raises her head, one elbow digging into the bed while her other arm curls on his waist. Her bangs fall into her eyes and her mouth is a dark line in the half-light of the setting moon. "Why'd you do all this?" she asks. "You could have compelled me to turn it back on, or sent me away to find out on my own."

He reaches to touch her cheek, ghosting over her lips and chin. "Elena Gilbert," he chides softly. "Do you imagine I regret a moment I've spent in your company? Did you think that there was a deadline, after which you're not worth it?"

This unsettles her, and her whole frame tenses in his arms. Shaking in faint denial, Elena protests, "But you've spent almost a decade tethered to a monster, with no guarantee how it would end."

"I would've waited longer." The words drag out of him, unwilling to leave his throat but impossible not to say. They linger, like the telling is a secret all its own. "I probably will."

It's Elijah who breaks their gaze, absently glancing to the window. His next statement is confident again, generous. "Don't look to me for pity, Elena, you won't find it. I make no apologies for stealing you away from Mystic Falls. It takes time for vampires to find their control, for those with great empathy, longer still."

He lays his hand on her neck, thumb edging toward the corner of her tremulous smile. Elijah pulls, drawing her up for a kiss. It's deep, ardent, and vulnerable. Crawling to meet him, Elena wraps her arms around his neck and sinks into the contact. Her emotions roil beneath the surface of her skin, a near-tangible hum. Their mouths join, separate, then join again.

"That's what I wanted to give you," he entreats. "Control, and time."

They push together again, moving in waves that feel scripted in their inevitability. Over a thousand years he's had many lovers but few loves, and her embrace is precious beyond measure. When Elena crests above him, her neck stretched bare as she closes her eyes and breaks apart, Elijah holds the vision for as long as fate will allow. She falls forward, body overcome in shivers and quakes, and he captures that sight too.

It's a spiral, this night, and pre-dawn glow slips inside the window to say they've reached the center at last. Elena sits up, the sheet crumpled at her waist, and pulls her hair to one shoulder.

"What happens now?" The question escapes without context, leaping from her voice as if parts of her soul have decided to charge ahead of the rest.

Half-risen, weight resting on his hands, Elijah observes her thoughts as they parade through her expressions. His protégé will have to learn to be secret all over again, learn to hide her emotions beyond an indifference she no longer feels, or any enemy she meets will read her like a words on a page. He asks, "What do you want to happen?"

Elena glances out at the view, watching the Rocky Mountains take shape in the light. They are behemoths that thrust up to the sky, dividing the world into pieces defined by lost loves and roads untaken.

A whisper, the truth, slips free. "I want to go home."

Her voice is too small, and the request too huge. _(I offer you respite, Elena Gilbert.)_

Bringing his hand to her knee, Elijah squeezes her gently over the bed sheet, and says, "We all go home, eventually."

Elena takes three deep breaths, then rises from the mattress. She walks naked to the hotel shower and closes the door behind her. The click as the latch catches is loud for a vampire's ears; there are no secrets left in this room. The water is hot, and it scalds Elena as she lets the rivulets make new paths on her skin. She doesn't see Elijah gather his own clothes, doesn't observe him put her purse together by the nightstand or make quiet calls to room service. When she steps out to change Elena finds him sitting at the suite's elegant coffee table, engrossed in his tablet with his phone safely inches away. He's wearing black slacks and a dark blue shirt, unbuttoned. She's not sure if he watches her dress, because Elena's mind is already escaping this room, flying over plain and desert to the green hills of Virginia.

"I'm leaving," she announces. Electing not to look up from the device, Elijah flicks from stock prices to news headlines.

The declaration is too stark, and worse, it doesn't explain. The _why_ is the most important part, the part Elijah's always been best with. Elena needs her friend to understand, so she tries again."Not just for Stefan and Damon, there's Caroline and Bonnie too. And Matt, and Mrs. Forbes, and just everyone. I have to find them all and apologize."

He still plays at being engrossed in an article of something or other; Elena can see black text on white with garish, bright photos on the bottom. When she's done rattling off her list, he acknowledges her statement with a mild, "I know."

"I can't be your apprentice anymore."

This gets a reaction—Elijah freezes and his eyes roll up to her. The twist in his mouth is assessing, perhaps even wry. "I should think not, Elena."

"I have to know what I missed by not choosing them," continues Elena. Maybe it's a justification, or maybe it's true, but her heart is beating too fast and when Elijah's gaze drops again it hits Elena in all the soft places she didn't realize still existed. His reluctance to engage is making this harder than she'd imagined.

"I owe too many apologies, and I have to make it right, Elijah." She swings her purse against her shoulder, and turns to the door of the hotel room. As she passes his chair, Elena leans down and kisses one cheek. Even at this, Elijah remains a statue to the touch.

"Goodbye," she manages, and slips out.

Elena is waiting before the elevator, the hard plastic of the floor button depressed beneath her finger, when she pivots to look back at their room. Thirty feet away, Elijah stands in the door frame with his hands in his pockets. His dark eyes pin her down, always the dominant predator, and he hasn't bothered to button his shirt.

All around them, the sounds of morning bring tiny changes to their little public scene. Elena hears the elevator slowly climbing through the walls, and she hears the soft murmur of other residents stirring awake. Elijah's gaze is fixed, always so steady and so unreadable. She can focus on his slow heartbeat even from this distance. It's even, untroubled, and it momentarily enrages her.

"How can you be so, so _cool_ about this?" Elena snaps. There's a pause, a silence where she thinks he might not answer, or that he'll pretend he's too far away to hear. Then the spell breaks and Elijah is before her: always the faster, the stronger, and the more terrifying of any choice.

He leans into Elena's space, cheeks brushing as his head tucks against her own. This simple contact evokes a sense memory of the night—the intensity of their intimacy and the vulnerability that had nearly overwhelmed her. It might be a seduction, a ploy to convince her to stay, except that Elijah's answer is short and cutting.

"There's no part of you that I'm _ever _cool about," he hisses.

"Elijah," she starts. Behind her, the indicator dings and slow cranks pull the doors open. His cheek is still pressed to her cheek, their bodies millimeters apart. Elijah smells wondrously alive, like far-away places or the air after rain. Elena wants to put her hands on his waist, but she can't summon her muscles to obey. Desire strikes again, a vampire double-punch of emotion shuddering through her blood and dizzying her judgment. This thing hovers between them, an unending desire to kiss him, and to invite him inside.

To wrap herself—_blood, bones, skin—_around her companion and never let go.

"Eternity is...such a long time," he murmurs. Then the Original shoves her with both hands. Startled, the younger vampire dances backward into the elevator.

"Elijah—"

"You do what you must."

The doors slide shut, and Elena doesn't see him again for thirteen years.


End file.
